Can you communicate?

I'd like to think I didn't have any problems socially, or with presenting myself professionally. Last week there was an FYP meeting in which the student NSS questions were put to us. Mr Clarke seemed confused as to why 'communication skills' and 'presenting yourself with confidence' were marked low.

In my opinion, throughout my university life I haven't done enough presentations. I have done one for PD15 which, lets be honest here, how many people put the effort in (it was first year, after all). The same goes for communicating with people in other disciplines about technical issues. I think it is pivotal that someone at the 'computing' level can at least bring there knowledge down to a level that presumes the person listening knows a thing or two about 'IT'. 

The problem is that these two things aren't pushed. No one is taken out of their comfort zone in the final year. Why not make 5% of distributed systems a team task. Force people to work together and perhaps create a small solution working with people from other departments? Yes that sounds difficult but if the school isn't prepared to try it why do they deserve 5/5. They don't in my opinion.

The same goes for presentation skills. Apparently one of PD31s complaints from the previous year was no presentations. So they removed it, due to it being convenient that web science would take up half of the module in our year. I believe the only reason people complained was due to them being put in a position that wasn't quite comforting. But really it's what they needed for the big wide world out there.

I personally have no issue communicating with someone or presenting. In industry ive presented to CEOs at board level for around an hour. So ten minutes is too little if anything.

I would have give them 3/5 for bother criteria. I just think for a perfect mark they could do more. And Compsoc is optional, I don't think it counts.